2005-07-01

David Appell (here; and his prev) and Chris Mooney have more on the "Barton affair". Waxman says:

These letters do not appear to be a serious attempt to understand the science of global warming. Some might interpret them as a transparent effort to bully and harass climate change experts who have reached conclusions with which you disagree

.

Indeed. So its good to see a heavyweight politician coming in on the side of science. Of course, this could just be a democrat-republican fight. The original Barton letters were politics/$ not science, so its probably right for this to turn, nakedly, into a political fight.

Interestingly, though, no-one seems to have anticipated this (even the normally politically astute Prometheus), even though it is (in retrospect) obvious.